Joe Friend

Designing software and loving it.

Office Labs goes live

I haven't posted here for a very long time and I can't honestly promise that I'm going to get any...

Author: Jfriend Date: 04/28/2008

Email is now off

I'm now on a new project, so for the time being I'm turning off the ability to contact me via this...

Author: Jfriend Date: 12/07/2006

Help Microsoft Office 2007 ship a better product

The Microsoft Word team needs your help! As many of you know, we have changed the look of the...

Author: Jfriend Date: 08/16/2006

Academic features: citation & bibliography tools

Jennifer Michelstein is a program manager on the Microsoft Office Word team who focuses on academic...

Author: Jfriend Date: 07/13/2006

Werner Vogels: Network Neutrality

Werner Vogels is the CTO for Amazon.com. This session is quite interesting. My favorite bit was the...

Author: Jfriend Date: 06/30/2006

Gnomedex 6.0

Attending Gnomedex for the second year in a row. Guess that really labels me as a geek.

Author: Jfriend Date: 06/30/2006

Praise from Mr. Macintosh

A nice complement from Guy Kawasaki on the blog feature in Word 2007. I was a pretty hardcore Mac...

Author: Jfriend Date: 06/09/2006

Simple things like copy & paste

By Stuart J Stuple One of the things that I love about Word 2007 is that many existing features are...

Author: Jfriend Date: 06/08/2006

XHTML output part 3

Zeyad has posted more information on the XHTML output from Word's new blog feature: Word XHTML -...

Author: Jfriend Date: 06/08/2006

Ten things I wish everyone knew about Word

By Stuart J Stuple Mastering Word isn’t about understanding the architecture or the intent of the...

Author: Jfriend Date: 06/05/2006

Blog post XHTML output part 2

Zeyad has more details on the XHTML output of the blog feature. His latest post focuses on...

Author: Jfriend Date: 06/04/2006

Short hiatus is over

I didn't mean to disappear. Last weekend's long break for Memorial Day broke my stride. I had a...

Author: Jfriend Date: 06/04/2006

Over 500,000 Served

No wonder our servers were having trouble keeping up with capacity. As of this afternoon we've seen...

Author: Jfriend Date: 05/26/2006

Feedback on Office 2007

Have you downloaded Office 2007 yet? Once you installed Office 2007 don't forget that we'd love to...

Author: Jfriend Date: 05/25/2006

Working on problems

Some of you have encountered problems successfully downloading, registering or installing Beta 2. As...

Author: Jfriend Date: 05/24/2006

HTML Output Spec

As I promised, we are posting details of the HTML output spec for the blog feature and are...

Author: Jfriend Date: 05/24/2006

Office 2007 Beta 2 now available

Beta 2 is officially released and is available for download right now. Drop what you're doing and...

Author: Jfriend Date: 05/23/2006

The new document look

The Word team is lucky to have a whole host of very talented people working on it. This is the first...

Author: Jfriend Date: 05/22/2006

Is Your PC Vista Ready?

I've been running Vista on my work desktop PC for several weeks now. I've got to admit that I'm...

Author: Jfriend Date: 05/19/2006

More Word blog authoring tidbits

In general, I prefer to sit back and watch the comments come in and respond to them in future blog...

Author: Jfriend Date: 05/18/2006

Word Blog HTML Quality

Every post you make as a blogger can be a huge learning experience. In Friday's post on the new Word...

Author: Jfriend Date: 05/16/2006

Sign up for Beta 2 now

If you haven't already, now is a great time to sign up for Beta 2 of Office 2007. Just go to the...

Author: Jfriend Date: 05/12/2006

Word 2007: sneak peak

I returned to Microsoft (after a 7 year hiatus) in late 2003 just as the Office 2007 effort was...

Author: Jfriend Date: 05/11/2006

How do they find the time?

I'm amazed by some bloggers ability to write tons of blog posts. Jensen, Dave, Brian, and all the...

Author: Jfriend Date: 05/10/2006

What if tomorrow never came?

Okay, I suck as a blogger. No way to deny it. My last post (from 11/27/05) ended with "More...

Author: Jfriend Date: 02/16/2006

What more can you add to a Microsoft Word?

This is a common question for all of the Microsoft Office applications, but particularly so for...

Author: Jfriend Date: 11/27/2005

New Office "12" file format news

If you haven’t made your way to Brian Jones’ blog, do so immediately. He’s announced some very...

Author: Jfriend Date: 11/22/2005

Beta 1 Ships...

Okay, okay. Office 12 beta 1 shipped. I’ve procrastinated as long as possible, but now I’ve really...

Author: Jfriend Date: 11/21/2005

I'm gonna post something, really!

Now that Microsoft Watch has linked to my blog I really must get things going. Shortly after the...

Author: Jfriend Date: 10/31/2005

Who am I

It's time to get this blog jump started. Best laid plans of mice and men and all. But first a little...

Author: Jfriend Date: 09/29/2005

Subscribe to Office 12 Preview News

The Office 12 Preview Site now has an RSS feed that you can subscribe to so that you can get the...

Author: Jfriend Date: 09/13/2005

Office 12 goes public

Well, the news is out. If you watched the PDC keynote this morning you know that Office 12 is a huge...

Author: Jfriend Date: 09/13/2005

Hello World

Not much can be said now, but in just a couple weeks all sorts of great news will be coming out...

Author: Jfriend Date: 09/02/2005